KoBoToolbox was co-founded by Phuong Pham and Patrick Vinck now based at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative who were confronted by the challenges of collecting data in a secure fashion, increasing the quality of survey data, and making results available rapidly after data collection. We first piloted handheld digital data collection in 2007 in northern Uganda. The effort gave its name to the project: KoBo means “transfer” in Acholi, one of the local languages. The development of KoBoToolbox was uniquely driven by field-based needs and challenges. KoBoToolbox continues to receive support from its amazing partners. The development of KoBoToolbox and its use in the field has been made possible by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The KoBoToolbox website includes sections for each of the tools, a User Guide to provide help, Showcases of projects using KoBo Tools, a Developers area, and more. For those interested in getting started with digital data collection, it is reccomended that you get an overview of the whole process on the Tour page, and complete the Getting Started tutorial from the User Guide.
KoBo is an open community and we would love to hear from those who consider using the KoBoToolbox and those who have already used it in the field. We hope that you will contact us with your questions and with information about your project.
